demagogue on 27/10/2007 at 21:20
I think they're humans. At the very least, some of them somewhere at some time will be human. You can't just say humans can't work for the police, or can't respond to certain calls, and nobody notice the arbitrary discrimination. Also, there's this business where they try to label Neo & gang as a terrorist organization, which you don't really need unless you're persuading humans somewhere.
But I don't think Neo is killing them in cold blood, at least when it's the police and security (non-fighting civilians wouldn't count). On the level he is fighting, from his perspective, it's a just war of liberation to overthrow a fascist regime, and the cops are like enemy soldiers taking orders from the bad guys -- whether they realize it or not. It's not personal, no more evil than any warranted military activity, he doesn't kill any more than needed to achieve a military objective, etc.
The major catch is that Neo and the cops understand the situation differently. You could say a similar thing about the police taking orders under any fascist regime, though. It's not their job to question orders.
But it does open a whole other can of worms about whether the "regime" is really fascist and warrants overthrowing (no inside; yes outside ... but 99% of the outside is inside). Anyway, I think that's the major question you'd have to answer to decide if Neo's cop-killing was justified or not ... I also think it doesn't have as obvious an answer as the movie makes it out to be.
SubJeff on 27/10/2007 at 23:48
Quote Posted by Mikael Grizzly
Except it's never mentioned.
Except it is. Watch part 1 again. Morpheus is pretty explicit about it in the first training session with Neo and the woman in red.
StellarStealth on 28/10/2007 at 01:02
I thought it was a GIVEN that the guards/cops/swat were humans. The agents hijack bodies in the matrix temporarily and use them as needed. You get a helicopter pilot turning into an agent, and then back into a helicopter pilot when killed.
Why would you assume the helicopter pilot was a program? What would be the point? Why not just send the agent in flying a helicopter?
Or the bum sleeping in the subway who turns int an agent. Was he a program? No, he was a bum that got hijacked by an agent. When neo won that fight, a random bum got hit by a train. Collateral damage, not exactly murder, but still a human dying.
Or the guy on the street that suddenly draws a gun...
or...
Yeah, they were humans. That was the entire POINT of the woman in red simulation. Until they're unplugged, they're part of the system, and if they're part of the system, they can't be trusted.
JayDee on 28/10/2007 at 01:15
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
In both T1 and 2 intros Garrett kills someone. That is his history, that is his truth and failure to recognise this is to further romanticise the whole thing and be an apologist for his actions.
I'm not so sure about that. If it were the intro to a mission, yes. I never got the impression that the intro movies to the game were things that actually happened. Rather, they were a way of showing all the cool stuff you can do in the game.
I can't see Garrett as a good guy. Someone with the right skills in the wrong place at the wrong time, more like.
jtr7 on 28/10/2007 at 02:58
The intros show a Hammer with a battle axe, a red-cloaked figure with a halberd, and red-cloaked figures with swords. We see the Trickster's forehead splitting open to reveal a huge roving eye, a figure playing bagpipes, a monk's head, and lamps hanging from a cord (one of which was snuffed out from getting bumped).
Meisterdieb on 28/10/2007 at 04:29
I -too- don not consider those intro movies where Garrett is seen to kill someone to be canon.They are only there to showcase some of the cool stuff you may do in the games.
Garrett is a thief, not a murderer. Both are criminals and will be hunted down by the police, but e.g. a thief will possibly not receive as harsh a treatment as a murderer.
The way some cut-scenes and missions are shown, and through some of his remarks, I don't think it is even in Garrett's interest to kill someone.
Again, because he is a thief. if a theft or robbery is reported, the police will try to solve it. But if a murder is committed, the police -and the people in general- will be on high alert.
Quote Posted by jtr7
The intros show a Hammer with a battle axe, a red-cloaked figure with a halberd, and red-cloaked figures with swords. We see the Trickster's forehead splitting open to reveal a huge roving eye, a figure playing bagpipes, a monk's head, and lamps hanging from a cord (one of which was snuffed out from getting bumped).
What is your post supposed to tell us? :confused:
Gambit on 28/10/2007 at 04:40
Quote:
This makes no sense. (...) No. It's in the game/film/book - it's a feature of the character. I cannot even begin to describe how wrong your perception is. In both T1 and 2 intros Garrett kills someone.
He kills in the intros, but IN-GAME if you want to play at the hardest setting, the expert one, then there is always, ALWAYS, that line:
Objective - Violence is the mark of the amateur. Don´t kill anyone.
Therefore I see the intros as "artistic license".
But that´s just my personal interpretation.
----------------------------------------------------------
So yes, Garrett can be seen as a paradoxal criminal. He loots but he refrains to kill, even when cased by angry mechanists...
jtr7 on 28/10/2007 at 04:43
What you just said, for the most part. What else?
sarasara on 28/10/2007 at 14:20
I suppose Garrett represents the shadow world of our own experience within this dark reality through which we fight our way everyday.
Garretts kills could be a metaphor for all the things we greatly disagree with and which we struggle against; all the obstacles which we find in our own daily path.
If he lacks spirituality it is because he lives in a world of cults, a world where divinity does not raise itself higher than the pursuit of materialistic mystical powers.
Garretts main duty is to survive no matter what, perhaps like the military he is faced with different battles to move his game forward than ours; we have to argue ourselves forward on a telephone, a document, a traffic jam, while he moves from day to day by the arrow and sword.
As to sin or guilt we are Garrett and all he does, we assume his actions as our own and perform them by our own choice and on his behalf.
If there is a concern about any computer game it is the worry about how it presents the world to young, impressionable and especially poorly raised kids. Thats why I was not keen on being presented with the option of robbing the public in T3.
To me all the factions are detrimental to the prospects for freedom and democracy in the Kingdom of Bafford. All the factions are extremist, all have deadly aims.
We were faced with the same problem at the end of Deus Ex 2. I personally took all factions out at the end of Invisable War only to discover that it made no difference to a terrible end to the world. But I did try to make choices which I thought would safeguard the future of the earth.
Garrett himself is a poor person. Yes, his flat is really lovely and cute and the architecture is nice, but where is the sign of any prosperity in his life? There is nothing in the flat worth anything. One gets the feeling that whatever he earns it is not enough to get him much more than the clothes he stands in and his weapons. Maybe he is paying high alimony for several wives and children, maybe taxes in the Kingdom of Bafford are despicably high, maybe he has to pay off the authorities to stay out of prison, maybe he is addicted to gambling, maybe he is being blackmailed, who knows?
But throughout our experience of him he has been following some sort of attempt to do the greater good; by saving the world from the devil in the Dark Project, by stealing and returning to its owners the eye and the builders chalice for instance.
His conversations with the Keepers do show that he wants to advance some sort of cause. But the Keepers themselves while being somewhat monkish and nunnish do not seem to adhere to any defined code of moral or spiritual ethics; rather a code of cultism.
So maybe I missed it but I'm still unsure as to our beloved alter egos motives. Could turn out he is saving up the money to launch a fleet to save his beloved princess from the tower, but whatever his motives I cant see him retiring anytime soon!
Papy on 28/10/2007 at 16:39
Is a soldier evil for killing enemies or people helping those enemies?
